Holding Service AS OTHER SPORTS WENT DARK, TENNIS PAUSED ONLY BRIEFLY, TAKING PAINS TO MOURN THE VICTIMS

The only major professional sports event conducted in the U.S.in this week of warring emotions was the Big IslandChampionships, a WTA tournament at the Hilton Waikoloa Villageon the Kohala Coast of Hawaii. Not that Arantxa Sanchez Vicario,Justine Henin or Lisa Raymond played on blithely as the nationwept. When tournament director Eric Kutner, 28, got the call toturn on his TV early on Sept. 11--the day after the event's maindraw had begun--he blanched, canceled play for the day and soinformed the WTA.

Then, with his brother Jeff and event staffers Ben Hodgson andSimon Porter, he watched the towers burn and fall. All exceptEric are or have been emergency medical technicians. They werewatching their brethren. Jeff Kutner, 22, a paramedic for CapitalHealth System in Trenton, N.J., who was in Hawaii working asassistant tournament director, said, "I worship those guys. Whenthe first tower came down, we screamed, 'The command post! Whathappened to the command post?'"

It was set up too close to the base of the Twin Towers, and morethan 300 emergency workers were lost in the pyroclastic-likeflows of ash and steel. "Our instinct is to be there," said Jeff,who planned to fly home on Monday night and hopes to volunteerfor the rescue effort. "Our mother's instinct," said Eric, "wasthat Jeff should just stay in Hawaii."

Early Wednesday morning Eric Kutner conferred with players andwith venue and tour officials, agonizing over whether tocontinue. That day, news of a groundswell of other sportscancellations gave the WTA brass pause, so it punted to the youngdirector. It was Kutner's call.

"We had three things to consider," he says. "Safety, logisticsand propriety. We were safe because the athletes were alreadyhere. It might have been more dangerous to send them back outinto the wild world."

Logistically, it seemed easy to cancel the tournament and nothave to pay $140,000 in purses. "But it's the first year, andwe're trying to build something," said Kutner. "I hated myselffor even thinking in those terms."

Then there was the big one. "What, exactly, is a decentinterval," Kutner asked, "after the worst thing that has everhappened to us?" No answer could satisfy everyone. Scalded bygrief, Kutner and his staff decided to go ahead with thetournament but agreed to create a powerful memorial service. "Notjust a minute of silence," said Kutner. "One that meantsomething, a rededication."

At noon last Friday, with the flag at half-staff, players,spectators and officials filed into the center court stadium atthe Hilton Waikoloa Village. Eric Kutner told them that he feltcontinuing to play was correct, but that it was right to rememberthose who had lost their lives and those taking part in therescue effort.

A Hawaiian kahuna, or priest, performed a haunting chant ofmourning and explained that anyone who wished could drape aflower lei, symbol of love and yearning and evanescence, over thenet. That night, as happens almost daily in the waters above theUSS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, five islands over, the leis would becast upon the sea. Fifty or so people walked past and left leis.One--a tall, sunburned man, sweating in white--was Wayne Newton,who then led the gathering in America the Beautiful. Finally,neighbors joined hands and gave themselves over to whereversilence took them. "And crown thy good with brotherhood"infiltrated one's consciousness the rest of the day.

The players felt the weight of the occasion. "It was good wedidn't have to try to play on Tuesday," said Sanchez Vicario, wholost in the second round. "I couldn't have done it."

The Europeans, whom one might expect to be hardened to therealities of terror, were not. Second-seeded Sandrine Testud ofFrance reported that airports were on alert in Rome and Paris andthat it felt like a "new stage" of war. "We had our Basqueseparatist terrorists in Spain, but they've kind of stopped,"said Sanchez Vicario. "But here, the innocents and, oh, thenumbers."

The top-seeded Henin of Belgium, a fierce 19, said, "This wasn'tunleashed just on the U.S. It was against all of us.

"I'm a sportswoman," continued Henin, who was trailing Testud6-3, 2-0 when she retired with cramps in her left hamstring inSunday's final. "I'll do anything to improve, but we have hearts.You want to do your best for...them."

Rededication. Sanchez Vicario likened it to competing only a fewdays after her father had had a serious heart attack in 1994:"The best I could do for him, he said, was to play and win. Iused the pain of that to motivate me."

On Friday night, after the day's last match, Eric and JeffKutner, Hodgson and Porter carried boxes filled with the leisthat had been blessed in the stadium ceremony past a stone Buddhaand onto a black lava point. There they cut the garlands' stringsto avert any danger to marine life and cast them softly, one byone, into the calm Pacific. Then they sat in silence, shoulder toshoulder, under the Milky Way, reflecting.

Their prayers and a gentle offshore breeze spread the leis overthe sea, save for a few representing those unlucky souls whoalways seem to get hung up on the rocks. As they floated there,it was easy to see them as a bridge, or at least an undulantorchid archipelago. A prayerful end. A respectful beginning.

TWO COLOR PHOTOS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN C. RUSSELL Love gamesNewton (left) did his part in song and symbolic gesture, while Testud, the event's champ, let her play carry the day.

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything